Chinese Medical E-ournals Database

Chinese Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Pediatrics(Electronic Edition) ›› 2026, Vol. 22 ›› Issue (05): 369 -379. doi: 10.3877/cma.j.issn.1673-5250.2026.05.001

Expert Editorial

Evolution of cervical cancer treatment: a clinical research perspective

Xuemin Gu, Sufang Wu†()   

  1. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Tongji Hospital Affiliated to Tongji University, Shanghai 200065, China
  • Received:2026-09-11 Revised:2026-09-20 Published:2026-10-01
  • Corresponding author: Sufang Wu
  • Supported by:
    National Key R & D Program of China(2025YFC2708404); General Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China(82272334, 82672138)

Cervical cancer treatment has undergone over a century of evolution, achieving a historic leap from empirical medicine to evidence-based medicine and precision medicine, and from local radical treatment to systemic precision diagnosis and treatment. The evolutionary process is briefly summarized as follows. ① In the field of surgery, the foundation of the Wertheim radical hysterectomy for cervical cancer, the standardization of the Piver classification (which classifies cervical cancer surgeries into 5 types according to the extent of resection), and the refinement of the Querleu-Morrow classification (which further subdivides the five types of hysterectomy based on the Piver classification) together outline the " trilogy" of standardized surgical treatment for cervical cancer. ② In the field of radiotherapy, treatment modalities evolved from radium therapy to combined external-beam and intracavitary irradiation, until 1999 when five randomized controlled trials (RCTs) established concurrent chemoradiotherapy as the standard, achieving the first leap in the history of cervical cancer treatment. ③ In the field of chemotherapy and targeted therapy, Gynecologic Oncology Group (GOG)-169 and GOG-179 laid the foundation for combination chemotherapy, GOG-240 confirmed that bevacizumab provides overall survival (OS) benefit for patients with cervical cancer, and antibody-drug conjugates(ADC), through the serial development of agents such as tisotumab vedotin (TV), have driven treatment from a " chemotherapy-dominated" approach toward a new paradigm of biomarker-driven precision therapy. ④ In the field of immunotherapy, KEYNOTE-158 achieved a breakthrough in later-line treatment options, and KEYNOTE-826 rewrote the standard of care for first-line treatment; the results of CALLA and KEYNOTE-A18 were one " negative" and one " positive" (the former negative, the latter positive), suggesting that precise patient selection is the key to improving treatment efficacy. In addition, Chinese scholars have made unique contributions in areas such as the critical appraisal of evidence for minimally invasive surgery in cervical cancer and the use of chemotherapy as an alternative to radiotherapy to preserve patients′ quality of life. Based on clinical research evidence, the authors intend to systematically review the evolution of cervical cancer treatment from the aspects of conventional surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy and targeted therapy, immunotherapy, and frontier advances, focusing on multidimensional molecular stratification, therapeutic vaccines, and individualized combination strategies, with the aim of providing a reference for individualized diagnosis and treatment and clinical practice of cervical cancer, and exploring the synergistic mechanism of screening-vaccination-treatment in the transition of cervical cancer from " treatment" to " elimination", thereby providing a model for the treatment patterns of other solid tumors.

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